Lewis Hamilton blasts F1's inaccessible 'billionaire boys club'

[ASFN Admin]

Lewis Hamilton says Formula 1 has become a “billionaire boys club” and there is “no way” he would make it in the sport if he were starting out now. The seven-time Formula 1 world champion famously grew up on a council estate in Stevenage and his father, Anthony, held down multiple jobs at once in order to put him through karting. He got his big break aged 13 when McLaren signed him to their driver development programme, sponsoring his rise from that moment on. But speaking to Spanish publication AS ahead of this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, Hamilton said he would not have made it in today’s world. “For me, personally, we’re living in a time that this is really a billionaire boys club,” he said. “If I go back to where I started, growing up in a normal working class family, there’s no way that I could be here. No way. All the guys that you’re fighting against just have that much more money. “I think for the future we’ve got to work to change that. To make it more accessible, to people from rich and more normal backgrounds.” Hamilton, who has taken a record 98 grand prix victories and 100 pole positions in his F1 career to date, has become an increasingly vocal campaigner for diversity. Following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in the United States last year, Hamilton instigated the anti-racism gesture F1 adopted on the grid before races. And he has continued to call for change.

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